Laughter is the best medicine!

It was an errand running morning:  Ace Hardware, the gym, Costco and then back to Ace.  I hate running errands with kids, but the cupboard was bare, and the last day of preschool is tomorrow (teacher gifts this year are garden flowers), so I had no choice but to drag the J’s along.  Everything went as expected, down to the poking that always starts halfway through a Costco trip.  I was searching for the quinoa, and the boys were going at each other like only brothers can do, when all of the sudden a loud buzzer sounded.  We’ve never heard this in Costco before, so the boys stopped cold and asked what it was.  I jumped at this rare opportunity for a little mommy fun and told them they were being watched and the workers didn’t like how they were acting.  The look on their faces was PRICELESS!  Both sat straight up with hands in laps with Jacob on the verge of tears for the rest of the shopping trip.  I was so amused by their reaction that I started laughing, which neither appreciated.  I laughed myself through check-out line, parking lot and into the car.  

There are too few opportunities to laugh as a mother…..or maybe there are plenty, but I fail to see the comedy in most of my day!?  The incident brought me a feeling of levity that was common in my pre-kid life.  It felt so good to claim that feeling as my own again.  It left me remembering all the ornery tricks my Mom would play on me and my siblings, and recalling stories of ornery tricks her Mom played on her.  My favorite is my Grandma telling her kids that monsters lived in the corn fields (and there are a lot of cornfields in Iowa….just a few yards from their house).  Then my Grandma would hide in the corn field and jump out to scare her kids!  Hilarious….and just what she needed to make it through the day as a mother of seven.  At ninety-three years old, my favorite thing to do with my Grandma is to laugh.  We usually do it at the expense of our husbands, who seem to provide an endless supply of material.  Her longevity is proof to me that laughter extends life, and makes the life you live richer.  

So as summer break is knocking on my door, rather than be stressed or frustrated by my little “helpers”, I think I’ll search for reasons to laugh….and maybe install a Costco-like buzzer in my own house:-)